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Texas, United States of America (23 August - 25 September 2011)

With my five-year British visa set to expire in just a few days time, I packed up my life in London and boarded a plane bound for Kristina in Texas where I was due to hang out for a month. I'd heard everything is bigger in Texas, and I was a going to a climate considerably hotter than the crap I had become acclimatised to in the UK. Kristina had already told me a lot but in reality I had no idea what to expect hehe. So here goes...

Tuesday, 23 August 2011 - Yeehaw!

So FedEx rocked up yesterday afternoon to collect my bike and a bag full of crap...		And I managed to crush the rest of my life into these three bags. The big one on the right was to be checked onto the plane and the other two were carry-on. The weight limit for checked-in baggage is 23kg, and my big fucking bohemoth came in at... 35kg hahaha! Fortunately my backpacking pack was stuffed in the bottom of it, so I was able to pull it out and put half my crap in that, and just pay the small fee for a second bag. Sorted.

This was the view from Heathrow, exactly the same as it looked when I arrived here almost five years ago to the day - gloomy and wet.		Some ten hours later this was the view of Texas. Just a bit of the patchy stuff in the sky and that's pretty much how it always looks, hence it's so brown down there - this thirsty land hasn't seen a decent rainfall in a long time.		I flew into Houston and had a short stopover before the flight on to San Antonio. If I was finding it hard to believe I was really here, I was left in little doubt when Texas Ranger Joe here came and sat down hehe.

Another hour later and I was flying over San Antonio, at long last!		Kristina collected me and my half-tonne of luggage from the airport, and I got my first taste of triple-figure temperatures (in Fahrenheit that is). This has been a particularly hot summer with highs regularly over 100 which is around 40 Celsius, and so far I'm loving it (there's only so much of the rubbish British weather one can tolerate).

For dindins I got my first taste of genuine Tex-Mex at Alamo Cafe - one of Kristina's favourite joints just round the road. Nom nom nom!		I also got my first taste of the Texan infatuation with 4X4's or what they call "trucks". Look at the size of this beast next to Kristina's car - it's taller than me! And they're everywhere. Back in New Zealand all the kids want Japanese sports cars; over here they all want massive gas-guzzling trucks.

Wednesday, 24 August 2011 - Kristina's hood

My first full day in Texas, and we started the day with a rousing breakfast of... breakfast tacos hehe at Las Palapas - another Mexican joint (of many) not far from Kristina's. They're good :)				FedEx dropped my bike off yesterday morning before I arrived, so task number one today was to put it back together. Awesome - time to explore! :)

This is Kristina's neighbourhood, called Hidden Forest, and it's pretty damn nice!		This is Kristina's house which is a pretty decent size but, as it turns out, pretty small compared to some of the others around.
For example. Some of the properties would be considered mansions where I come from!		This monster even had its own massive fountain in the front yard hehe, though thanks to the droughts at the moment they're not allowed to run it.

I had to take a panorama just to fit this big bastard in hahaha!

A lot of these properties have Texan and/or US flags in proud view - very patriotic people.				This one had a fish hehe.

Cool street names. My lost cabin is hidden from view.		Cherokee, like the native Indians, of which Kristina is a 16th or something (so half of one of her legs ;)		Now this pisses me off, these completely unnecessary stop signs absolutely everywhere. Here's a prime example. This is a T-intersection. In my opinion, the truck there coming from the stick of the T need be the only one to stop - the road I'm on would therefore be able to continue through. But instead, all three entrances to the intersection have bloody stop signs - what the fuck for?! At a number of other intersections there are stop signs where yields ("Give Way" elsewhere in the world) are perfectly adequate. However, given the number of cops that patrol the area with quotas they're looking to fill, you've little choice but to heed the damn sign.

Anyway, I continued on out of Hidden Forest and into some of the neighbouring suburbs.		Drivers here have a big problem with deer darting out onto the road. Kristina alone has taken three of them out, and her mom (note "mom", not "mum" ;) smacked two in a one day, of which one literally ran into the back of her stationary car hahaha!		American school bus!

There's one of those cops I mentioned above. They hide out, and just wait; wait for people like me who aren't interested in those ridiculous stop signs.		I also ventured out on to the one of the main arterial roads running through the area, and was impressed to find dedicated cycle lanes hehe.		According to my (new) GPS it was 44 degrees Celsius out today. That's a little exagerated since it's in direct sunlight but regardless I've never experienced such temperatures before let alone cycled in them - the closest I've come is early-30s in Brisbane. I actually found it to be ok while I was moving because the breeze keeps you cool, but when stopped to take photos it was pretty warm hehe. And the road surface is fucking hot! I wouldn't want to fall off the bike here because apart from the obvious reasons you'd probably suffer severe burns hahaha!

Later in the day, ol' sexy legs here and I took a ride to her local pool where she spends a lot of time over the summer giving one-on-one swim lessons to brats, which is how she earns her millions to go travelling for the other eight months of the year and living with me in Paris etc. :) I spent that time swimming around and probably looking really suspicious.

After that we headed over to the local dog park, where dogs tear around and piss on all the trees and some try to mount all the others.				Kristina's dog Layla is the German shephard-husky with the highlighter-green scarf. She's a little socially inept hehe so a trip to the dog park is always a nervous one. Though if my owner put a scarf that colour on me I'd feel a little awkward too ;)

Thursday, 25 August 2011 - The Texas talking point

So this is a shopping complex, not to be confused with a shopping mall - that's something different. San Antonio is apparently full of these massive things (which themselves are full of massive people hehe), surrounded by residential neighbourhoods, and all connected by highways. And that's it in a nutshell, apart from downtown which I'll check out tomorrow. Anyway, we came here to grab some breakfast and run some errands.		Before long that threatening sky opened up to create a topic of conversation for days to come. As I mentioned on Tuesday when I flew in, Texas is in drought and downpours like this are few and far between, and hence when they do happen they become a real talking point for the locals hehe.
The sky didn't take long to clear though, and Kristina had to give a half-hour swim lesson at her pool again later in the day, so I tagged along and spent the time wandering the surrounding neighbourhood of Vista Del Norte. I know a lot of folk beg to differ but I love suburbia. I just find it fascinating to see where and how the locals live.
Properties of all shapes and sizes, most of which had a truck parked up the driveway...

...and most of which had an American flag flying loud and proud hehe.		The only problem with this hood is it's right under the flight path into the airport which is just a couple miles away (so I probably saw this myself from the air on Tuesday), and they just keep on coming.		The "Good Neighbor Program" - probably means they wouldn't like weirdoes with cameras wandering around and casing the joint.

Later in the evening we went out for drinks with Kristina's twin brother, Zach, to the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium which sources hundreds of beers from the world over - awesome! We settled for a couple samplers, and here Kristina shows us how to employ the pinky-in-the-air technique of drinking.				You can get a members card for this place, which records every drink you've ever had here. Once you've downed 200 distinct pints of different beers, you get a plate with your name on the wall and $100 off a pub party or something or other. Just look at all these drunkards hehe, and this was only a quarter of them! I felt like I was back in Britain ;)

Friday, 26 August 2011 - You can always go, downtown

That's a song by the way, but before I get to that, I opened the bedroom blinds in Kristina's room this morning to find these little bastards all over the outside of the windows and building nests hehe (evidently her blinds haven't been opened in quite some time, or washed). I've never seen these things before but I think they're paper wasps. Anyway, cool as a cucumber, Kristina's dad whipped out the bug spray, slipped his arm out the window, and fucked 'em all up.

After all that excitement Kristina and I hit the spaghetti that is the US highway system to go check out downtown San Antonio for lunch.				Yippee! I plan on biking around here at some point, so just a quick in-and-out for now.

Before lunch though I had to see the cliché tourist attraction of the city: The Alamo! This was the sight of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 - a 12-day rumble between Mexican troops (2,400 of them) and Texan troops (only 260 of them) and a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. At full-time the final score was Mexico 1, Texas 0, with all but two of the Texans killed so not a good day at the office. They got their own back about a month later however when they got some mates together and thrashed the Mexis, thus ending the revolution. Good times. Now the Alamo serves as a museum of the Texas Revolution, but unless you're big on American history it isn't the most exciting thing around. It's got a pretty nice backyard though.				And across the street is the Guinness World Records Museum, with Robert Wadlow the world's tallest man in the background there, and probably one of the fattest in the foreground (but he's real).

We left the Alamo and wandered over to this: the San Antonio River Walk. This is a network of walkways along the banks of the San Antonio River, lined with shops, bars, and restaurants.
The River Walk sits one storey down from the roads above, and winds and loops under bridges as two parallel sidewalks. It also connects some of the main tourist attractions of downtown including the Alamo. In short, it's an awesome spot!

I had a big artery-clogging burger for lunch at the joint on the left, but there's no shortage of different types of food and restaurants along here, including this random one on the right with animatronic jungle animals.				And of course there's always an Irish pub, always - no matter where in the world you are.

Saturday, 27 August 2011 - Christmas in August

Today we checked out just a bit of the Texas Hill Country which is a region of Central Texas featuring tall rugged hills. Specifically we ventured into Guadelupe River State Park, a bit under an hour's drive out of San Antonio. And damn was it a warm one today at 42 degrees Celsius (108 F) according to the weather app on my phone.

The park has a few walking / cycling / horse-riding trails through it, so the bike came with and I went nuts for about an hour around one of the larger trail loops. To say it was a little dry would be an understatement. All it would take is for one idiot to throw a cigarette butt out the car window and this would all go up in a flash. This is (so far) the hottest temperature I've ever cycled in, and I felt completely drained of energy. It was as though I'd just done a long hard ride the previous day and my legs were tired, except that wasn't the case at all. Interesting.

Looking out over the Hill Country.

The Guadalupe River around which the park is set is an awesome spot and really popular with the locals, or at least it usually is except for the fact there's hardly any water in it at the moment - barely up to my pecker in the deeper parts (and that's not because I have a small pecker ;) We are going to go tubing elsewhere next week that apparently still has plenty of H2O flowing, but here it's all but stagnant and pretty gross, and after biking around for an hour in temperatures over 40 degrees I was really hoping for a swim!

On the way back to San Antonio we stopped in here for lunch. Sonic is a hedgehog, but it is also the name of an American drive-in fast-food restaurant chain. You drive up, place your order through the speaker, and a car hop brings it out to you, sometimes on roller skates hehe. Kristina has seen many a skating carhop go arse over tit with trays of food sent flying hahaha!		Oh dear, the fanatics have found some spare cash again. Without getting into the whole God thing, isn't this a bit pointless on a highway billboard? Team God don't need to be reminded, and Team Atheist don't give a shit.		As we all know, the Americans really love to go over the top, and Christmas is one such example along with Thanksgiving, Halloween, Independence Day, etc. Since this year will be the first Christmas away from home for Kristina, and since it'd be cool for me experience something resembling an American Christmas, her folks threw a massive Christmas-themed bash tonight complete with turkey and all the rest of it. Good stuff, and over the top indeed ;)

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